Chapter One
It had been three months since the Arcane Trials.
Three months since Kaelric handed me the keys to his mother’s childhood home like it was nothing, like it wasn’t his last tether to her, and disappeared. Sometimes the house still felt too big for me, its corners holding the echo of a family I never met.
Valkaryn was still stashed in the trunk in my closet, buried beneath spare blankets as if that could dull her presence. I had no more need of her in a peaceful place like Hildreth, and simply seeing her made something hot bloom beneath my ribs. Anger. Loss. Regret. She was a reminder of what could have been.
I could have magic right now.
I could have Kaelric.
He could have his revenge, his justice for his people.
Instead, we had none of that. Only silence.
Some nights, when the house was still, and shadows stretched long across the wooden floors, I thought I heard Valkaryn calling to me, a soft brush of her presence, like a whisper caught in a dream. But when I stirred and glared at the trunk’s iron hinges, she went quiet again.
If she did speak, it was once a month at most, and only to encourage me to find Kaelric. To go to him. To finish what he began. I ignored her, and eventually she stopped asking.
A mother’s call to help her son was sweet, but it didn’t consider my life here. My family. My siblings, whose laughter filled the yard. The new beginnings I wanted to witness. I wanted to see them grow, help them settle into a life free of the Dregs and fear. I wanted peace.
I awoke to the smell of something warm and delicious drifting through the house. I inhaled sugar, berries, and rising bread, and slipped out of my blanket, padding across creaky wooden floors toward the kitchen.
There I found Mira standing on a stool beside Elia, flour dusting both their arms like festival paint.
“Elia!” I exclaimed.
I gave Kaelric’s cousin, one of my closest friends, a tight hug, breathing in the scent of honey crusting in the oven.
She hugged me back with one arm, the other pointing out what Mira should stir next in their messy bowl. Through the window, morning light spilled over the yard. I peered outside to see her daughter chasing our new flock of chickens across the grass with Sable. The two girls were fast friends, weaving between blueberry bushes and the worn old fence. Sable often spent nights sleeping over at Elia’s and vice versa, their giggles filling the evenings long after the candles were blown out.
“Sweet Mira wanted to bake something for your mother’s birthday and surprise her, so I told her I’d come over early and help.”
I felt my eyes widen.
Mother’s birthday.
I had completely forgotten.
I’d been helping put the roof on Fiona’s new place. It would finally be complete, walls sealed tight, windows installed,a small woodstove, and real floors. We’d even rigged running water indoors, gravity-fed from the rain-catch system Kaelric’s building team had invented. Fiona was due any day now, belly round and back aching. Helping her gave me a purpose. I was learning so much, busy day and night, just how I liked it.
But that meant I’d forgotten Mama’s birthday. Shame cut low in my gut.
“Have you heard from Kaelric?” I asked, trying to keep my voice casual but hearing the tension anyway.
Elia was my only source of him, my window into his war, his survival. As much as I wanted to shove him into the farthest corner of my mind, forget him, I couldn’t. Some days, I still brushed my fingers across my lips, remembering what it was like to kiss him. What it was like to choose him and lose him.
She nodded. “He’s fine. The fighting moved closer east, but he was able to push it back. He’s making his way to the capital, Lunaria, slowly but surely.”
I nodded, pretending that “fine” meant what it should. Just saying his name made my heart pinch with a physical ache in my chest.
“I’m gonna go pick some wildflowers for my mother,” I told Elia, unable to stand still.
She gave me a bright, encouraging smile.
I slipped out the front door and into the thick, dew-soaked woods that hugged our home. Pale morning light filtered through the canopy, dusting ferns with gold. The forest floor was damp beneath my boots, and little purple wildflowers clustered between the feathery fronds like scattered jewels.
I bent down, plucking a handful, lost in thought—my mother’s birthday, her soft smile, Kaelric—when a twig snapped behind me.
